


Halieutics

by luna65



Category: Original Work
Genre: Creepypasta, Gen, Kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-16 17:12:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16499426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luna65/pseuds/luna65
Summary: Take only visions, leave nothing but memories.





	Halieutics

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to post this on Halloween, so my apologies for the lateness.
> 
> Dedicated to my dear M.F. for being an ever-flowering source of inspiration and for believing in me, always.  
> With thanks also to the Pacific Northwest which left its' mark upon me.

He pulled up the coordinates on Google Earth and there it was: the cabin. 

“It looks...primitive,” I said.

“My dad’s rustic hideway!” he enthused. 

My boyfriend was the kind of guy who tended to say we should get back to Nature, but we never quite managed to actually make it there. Unless you count making s’mores by the fireplace or something. Then his dad passed away and now he had this. The cabin.

“So how long has it been abandoned?”

“Never actually abandoned, but the last time someone stayed in it? Years.”

“It still looks pretty sturdy, I guess.”

The woods around it were vast. He managed to figure out that the nearest sign of habitation was about eight miles off - a Forest Service outpost along the main track. It was difficult to imagine - in our overdeveloped world - a place like that. A place which people had not invaded and spoiled.

“It’s beautiful, right? We’re going.”

“Like, right now?”

“Next weekend. Joe and Lys and Evan and Dan will come with us too. There’s two bedrooms and a loft.”

“Wow, sounds like a timeshare.”

“Smartass! It’s gonna be great, just think of what it will be like to be in a place where you can’t hear anything but Nature.”

I couldn’t even imagine it, but I had heard ambient recordings from various forests.

“Noisier than our neighborhood, I bet. But what if we can’t sleep there?”

“Why couldn’t we?”

“You don’t know; I mean, it looks okay but there could be problems.”

“That’s why Joe is coming, he can fix anything.”

I remained skeptical, but supportive.

 

After stopping in Centerton for gas and snacks (in lieu of lunch) and a map (my guy had lost his, somehow), our brave little caravan took Exit Nine and drove for hours through the forest. It was gorgeous but also eerie. We saw signs for towns with quaint names and passed into unspoiled vistas once more, finally turning upon a dirt road as the sun was starting to slope down towards the west.

“Wowzers, you weren’t kidding when you said it was _remote_ ,” Lys breathed as we bumped along. Branches scraped the top of my guy’s SUV and also Joe’s truck following along.

“Yeah it’s totally undeveloped,” he told us.

“So how does someone actually acquire land like that?”

“It goes back to the 1800s, I think. The government tried to buy it back but my great-grandfather wouldn’t sell. He had to promise not to put anything modern on it, though.”

“Wait - so does that mean -”

“No indoor plumbing?” Lys wailed.

“Sorry ladies, we’re roughing it!” he proclaimed and we groaned in response.

 

But that’s what started it all, you see. We got to the cabin and it was dirty and weatherbeaten, but structurally sound. I was surprised that it hadn’t succumbed to the elements. We spent a couple hours cleaning - especially the outhouse, because we were all afraid of spiders and ticks and whatever else there might be lurking in such a place. We tested the pump and after a bit of groaning and rust-colored splatters, the water ran clean and pure.

It was amazing, none of us had ever stayed in such a place. I’d been camping many times but always in a campground around other people with some creature comforts. The cabin was on a rise, there was a path which led past the outhouse and down into tall grass and trees, a little ways off was a stream, burbling over rocks. Across the way the woods continued, dense and green. Down at the stream you couldn’t really see beyond the trees, but it was absolutely peaceful.

Still, I was getting a vibe. I couldn’t help it, though I didn’t say as much to my boyfriend or our friends.

Even the wood-burning stove was in order and we were able to cook an actual meal, it was great - good food and wine, laughter and lively conversation by candlelight and lantern glow. We built a fire and made sure the cabin was secure against the night, which descended quickly. One moment long blue shadows and the sky all intensely gold and purple, then utter blackness, stars winking and a slow moonrise. But then the landscape glowed in that particular way in which the moon can make the outside nearly bright as day. We stood out by a firepit which had been dug and lined with stones between the cabin and the outhouse and marveled at the stars...so many stars.

The night was full of birds and crickets and the stream and whatever else was out there. We shivered when the cold became too intense and went back inside. But I dared myself to remain just a little longer, my back to the cabin, imagining I was utterly alone.

Have you ever been completely alone in a place? It feels profound, somehow.

 

I tried to convince everyone else to let me use a bucket on the back porch, but it was a unanimous decision: the wee hours were literal - use the outhouse. My boyfriend gave me one of those Maglite-type flashlights.

“You know, just in case,” he said.

“In case of what?” I asked, though I appreciated the heft of the thing.

“Better not to think about it.”

... _yeah_.

 

That first night, I swore I heard something scream.

 

We spent the next day keeping close by, working on making the cabin entirely livable. We had brought enough supplies to do so, everything from bedding and cushions and linens to canned goods and freeze-dried meals to toilet paper and reading materials which had to be placed inside of a special archival container to keep any paper-loving bugs out.

I realized he meant to make this _his_ \- maybe _our_ \- second home.

Dan fancied himself a fishing enthusiast and so I went with him down to the stream to try his luck at catching dinner. The water was fairly wide and fast-moving though not too deep. The sound of it, combined with the birdsong and wind, was utterly soothing, even as the feeling nagged at me. I couldn’t even tell you what it was, exactly, just _weird_.

“What swims around here?” I asked him as we stood upon rocks at the shore and he cast out into the sparkling tumbling water.

“I did some research, and it’s not much: some walleyes, maybe some crappies or shad.”

“Huh?”

He laughed. “Just your typical river-type fish, doll.”

“I suppose you two will want to come out here all the time too.”

“Evan’s not real big on the outdoors, hon, you know that. And I gotta say: there’s a vibe, right?”

“I know, right? What is it? I mean, this place is _beautiful_.”

“It reminds me of this one time we went to New Hampshire. You know that state is, like, 85% forest, right? And we drove through this one town, I guess it was? One of those places with just one main road. We stopped for gas and I remember just looking around and everything felt like we needed to get the fuck out of there _pronto_. I dunno why or anything, but I will never forget that. And I feel an echo of it here.”

The silence which wasn’t quite silence swallowed up his words as we stood there.

“You feel so small, in a place like this,” Dan said.

 

We returned triumphant and Dan and Lys were good sports about cleaning the fish because the rest of us were clueless cityfolk. Dan said not to expect much in terms of flavor because small river fish tended to be bland but we were all surprised to find that these fish were _delicious_ after being fried.

“Maybe **this** is why your family never wanted to sell,” Joe opined.

“It was a family thing, the ancestors insisted, from generation to generation, that they couldn’t sell the land or the cabin.”

“It’s great,” Evan said, before eating another forkful, though his tone was less than enthusiastic. Evan was a quiet kind of guy, we had all learned over the years that was just his way.

“Hey, I’ve got a great idea for after dinner,” my boyfriend said. “Let’s go down in the basement.”

“What?!” was the collective response.

“No look, I was down there this afternoon and I cleaned up and stuff. There’s, like, a place to hang out.”

“Isn’t it going to be cold down there?” I asked.

He frowned. “Oh. Yeah I guess I didn’t think of that.”

Dan and I exchanged a glance. _There’s that weird vibe again._

 

After more wine, and then some schnapps in our after-dinner coffee or cocoa, we gamely went down the stairs and under the cabin, carrying lanterns and flashlights. It felt dank but not too musty, I could smell traces of the cleaning supplies among the stronger scents of earth and concrete. There were rows of shelving bearing up ancient canned goods and jars of preserved fruits and vegetables but also a space with an old couch and a recliner. The strangest thing - which my boyfriend immediately pointed out to us - was a painting hung on one of the support beams. It was a canvas on a smaller scale, painted with an image of the stream, looking off towards the West. It was the exact same view which Dan and I had beheld earlier in the day but the sky...the sky was wrong somehow, and I couldn’t tell you how, but I just knew.

It looked like the sky was empty of all things, waiting for something.

“Look, my dad painted this,” he said. “I didn’t even know he _could_ paint.”

We made appreciative noises as we gathered around it, and I could feel the cold and apprehension in the rest of us.

“I dunno ‘bout you but I’m going back upstairs,” Lys suddenly said. “This girl is cold!”

A collective shiver ran through us, but I believed it wasn’t so simple at all.

 

“I think this place is haunted,” I told him as we lay in bed. I whispered it, almost too afraid to acknowledge it.

“What? You don’t believe in that kind of stuff, do you?”

“I didn’t think I did, but I can _feel_ something. Something is watching us. I don’t mean in the cabin, but _this_ place.”

“You’re just spooked ‘cause it’s so remote. You always get spooked like that.”

“ _Exactly_. Those places which are left to themselves? There’s a reason why.”

He sighed. “There’s usually a lot of reasons.”

“But mostly because people aren’t supposed to be there.”

He turned to me, though I couldn’t see his face, it was so absolutely dark.

“If that were true, then why has my family been here so long?”

“But what do you remember about this place? When you were a kid, I mean.”

“My dad never brought us here. He left it to _me_ , though, not my sister too.”

“Was she mad?”

“No, she didn’t care about any of that.”

“Why did you never come here as a kid?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, I’m here now.”

But I thought it _did_ matter. I couldn’t tell him, he had already turned away from me and into sleep.

 

I woke late - there was a (seemingly) long and involved dream of...hiking? Through the woods, across the stream. There was a path, and there was something at the end of the path.

Everyone else was awake, there was coffee and breakfast and Lys was delighted at her foraging discovery.

“These blackberries are _so good_!”

I must have looked stunned because there were a few chuckles at my expression.

“It’s just...uh, do you know they’re okay?”

“Yeah sure, they matched the ones in my foraging guide.”

“And none of you are dead, so…”

But I flashed on that thought, for some reason. _Are you sure about that?_

The berries did taste _delicious_ , I had to admit.

 

I suggested the hike. 

 

Unlike the clear sky and mellow sunshine of the previous days, the weather was overcast, the air felt heavier. We thought we might follow the stream for a while, everyone kitted out with compasses and GPS assistance, but then Dan noticed that you could get to the other side via a formation of rocks making a sort of path, appearing at a low spot in the water.

“What if it’s not low when we try to cross back?” I asked.

My boyfriend shrugged. “It’s not that deep anyway,” he said, and everyone else nodded.

 _But this is the kind of nonchalance which gets you killed_ , I wanted to insist, but didn’t.

 

There was no _deja vu_ from my dream as we moved along in the woods just adjacent to the stream, so we wouldn’t lose our point of reference. We were all quiet, looking around. There wasn’t much visible other than the trees. The trees were tall and numerous and it felt like there would be nothing but trees if we kept going. After an hour we stopped for a snack, sitting on a fallen log, listening to the stream and the birds and the wind, then the air changed, the sound _changed_.

I looked around to see everyone had the same open-mouthed expression.

There was a high-pitched tone in my left ear like tinnitus, a sense like being underwater, and we couldn’t speak - like we wouldn’t be able to hear ourselves, or each other, and yet the day was the day, the sun was shining, somewhere up there.

I stood up, I’m not sure how I did it, the sense of wrongness was so overwhelming. I stumbled, maybe fell, down the rise to the stream and into the water, the shock of the cold seemed to stop the feeling of being smothered in the air. Everything came back to what it was for me.

I climbed back up the hill - wet and muddy and gasping - and they were gone.

 

There was an intrusive thought, and I fully understood what that meant every day since. _The sky took them back._ But that’s not the sky, I know the difference. In the ranger’s station I pulled a blanket over my head and fought off a wave of nausea, brought on by my exposure. They called it dehydration, and thought perhaps I had eaten something I shouldn’t have, out there in the woods.

 _Exposure_ was wholly appropriate.

 

I never found my way back to the cabin. Someone from the Forest Service found me on the main track, they told me. I have no recollection as to how long I was out there, wandering. I blinked, and then I was there, and then I was here, and I can remember there but I can’t find it. _They_ can’t find it. None of it.

 

All I can really think about is that painting. The wrongness of it. The wide stream, the rocks, the forest on either side, but it’s all just set dressing for the sky. The painting was no larger than a foot on either side but the sky took up most of the space. That was where the sense of being watched came from, I thought.

It would be one thing if I had been lost. But I was not lost. Or rather, I was lost to whatever it was we had entered into. I’m outside of it now, but I know it. And _here_ , no one knows them, only me.

His father must have known. The basement was an apt place to hide.

I could paint that sky, I think. I could imbue it with the sense of _knowing_ which I felt, that inarticulate atavistic chill to view a place which contains no remorse for its’ existence, and offers no understanding. Did he paint it because he knew it was watching him, even underground? Did he paint it because he couldn’t **not** paint it?

I don’t even know how to paint, or draw. I’ve never had that ability or talent. But I could, I could do it too. I want to do it. And then I want to see what happens when I do.


End file.
